I have also observed that almost all animals have truly a heart,
not the larger creatures only, and those that have red blood, but
the smaller, and pale-blooded ones also, such as slugs, snails,
scallops, shrimps, crabs, crayfish, and many others; nay, even in
wasps, hornets, and flies, I have, with the aid of a magnifying
glass, and at the upper part of what is called the tail, both
seen the heart pulsating myself, and shown it to many others.
But in the pale-blooded tribes the heart pulsates sluggishly and
deliberately, contracting slowly as in animals that are moribund,
a fact that may readily be seen in the snail, whose heart will be
found at the bottom of that orifice in the right side of the body
which is seen to be opened and shut in the course of respiration,
and whence saliva is discharged, the incision being made in the
upper aspect of the body, near the part which corresponds to the
liver.
This, however, is to be observed: that in winter and the colder
season, exsanguine animals, such as the snail, show no pulsation;
they seem rather to live after the manner of vegetables, or of
those other productions which are therefore designated plant-
animals.
It is also to be noted that all animals which have a heart have
also auricles, or something analogous to auricles; and, further,
that whenever the heart has a double ventricle, there are always
two auricles present, but not otherwise. If you turn to the
production of the chick in ovo, however, you will find at first
no more a vesicle or auricle, or pulsating drop of blood; it is
only by and by, when the development has made some progress, that
the heart is fashioned; even so in certain animals not destined
to attain to the highest perfection in their organization, such
as bees, wasps, snails, shrimps, crayfish, etc., we only find a
certain pulsating vesicle, like a sort of red or white
palpitating point, as the beginning or principle of their life.
We have a small shrimp in these countries, which is taken in the
Thames and in the sea, the whole of whose body is transparent;
this creature, placed in a little water, has frequently afforded
myself and particular friends an opportunity of observing the
motions of the heart with the greatest distinctness, the external
parts of the body presenting no obstacle to our view, but the
heart being perceived as though it had been seen through a
window.
I have also observed the first rudiments of the chick in the
course of the fourth or fifth day of the incubation, in the guise
of a little cloud, the shell having been removed and the egg
immersed in clear tepid water. In the midst of the cloudlet in
question there was a bloody point so small that it disappeared
during the contraction and escaped the sight, but in the
relaxation it reappeared again, red and like the point of a pin;
so that betwixt the visible and invisible, betwixt being and not
being, as it were, it gave by its pulses a kind of representation
of the commencement of life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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